“I Can’t Tell You.”

June 10, 2011

The house I grew up in was built in the 50s. My father, who said a previous owner had been stabbed to death in Mexico (far south), had done a lot of renovation: moving walls, etc. One night he walked into the expanded kitchen and swore he saw a man turn and run through the wall. I was in there one night watching a war movie on the little television when a shell exploded and the wall-phone literally flew off the hook.

———-
My father died nearly seven years ago. (God, has it been that long?) My brother’s wife was expecting at the time. On his deathbed, my father predicted a boy. (With four kids and two grandkids, he’d been right 100%.) This time, though, he was wrong. A month after the daughter was born, my mother dreamt my father was standing outside on the deck. He wouldn’t say where he’d been or why he’d come back. Specifically, he said, “I can’t tell you.” Days, thereafter, the daughter died from a feverous infection.

Within the same year, my mother was visited again. Again, my father would not answer her questions. The next morning, her brother was found dead from a massive heart attack.

5 years have passed. Luckily, none of my own have died, and no revisitations. My brother’s next child was a boy.

There's a possibility all of these stories are the result of drugs, mental illness, physical illness, stress, sleep paralysis, dreams, or natural phenomena misidentified. That all of these stories are the result of the story teller lying or exaggerating.
But out of all the hundreds of stories here there is also the very real possibility that perhaps one is the absolute truth, that one has no other possible explanation other than the supernatural.
The question is, which story is it and what would that suggest about the universe.